Prisoners’ Education and Advocacy Project (PEAP)

The Prisoners’ Education and Advocacy Project

The Prisoners’ Education and Advocacy Project is Penn Law’s central organization for criminal justice related pro bono work. The Project is an umbrella for two different component projects:

The Prisoners’ Legal Education Program

The Prisoners’ Legal Education Program focuses on educating prisoners on modern legal issues, while providing the students with a forum for personal growth. Weekly, Penn Law students travel to three facilities in the Philadelphia Prison System (PPS) to teach prisoners. Before heading to a particular facility, students must meet to form a lesson plan on the legal subject matter to be taught that week. Topics covered this year include: the Second Amendment, Contributory Liability, and Free Speech under the First Amendment. The following week, Penn Law students return and organize a mock trial based on the lesson taught the week before.

We encourage all those interested in the project with any questions to contact Kaitlin Keller at kkaitlin@law.upenn.edu.

The Pennsylvania Innocence Project

The Pennsylvania Innocence Project is a non-profit, public policy organization located at Temple Law School and is comprised of lawyers and law students working to exonerate wrongfully convicted persons through DNA testing and a general reform of the criminal justice system. Students can review case files and other crucial documents to determine whether convicted individuals have a legitimate claim of factual innocence.